Accessibility

What Is Accessibility?

Something is "accessible" when it can be used by people with disabilities. In the same way buildings have ramps for people using wheelchairs, information systems and websites need to be accessible to employees or customers who are blind, deaf, or physically disabled.

When an information system is accessible, its screens can be magnified and color-enhanced, its text can be read aloud with computer synthesized speech, its audio tracks can be translated to text as closed captions, and it can be operated using special keyboards or voice commands.

Why is Accessibility Important?

Accessibility is the Law

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires governments and businesses to accommodate their employees with disabilities and to ensure that information on their websites is accessible to customers with disabilities as well. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that almost all Federal information technology be accessible as of June 2001. In Illinois, the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act requires that information technology developed, purchased, or provided by the State of Illinois be accessible to individuals with disabilities. Lawsuits testing the accessibility laws are becoming more and more common.

Accessibility is Good Business

People with disabilities can be your customers and your employees. An accessible website or information system enables you to tap into this resource when others cannot. The same techniques that make information systems accessible also open the doors for use on smartphones and tablets. And, improving accessibility almost always makes your systems easier and more efficient for anyone to use.

The World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative has developed a suite of resources designed to help an organization develop a customized business case for web accessibility: Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization: Overview.

Where Do I Start?

Many people with disabilities use specialized "assistive technologies," like screen readers, screen magnifiers, and speech recognition software, to access web content. These assistive technologies are very powerful tools that do most of the work for you. Your job is to make sure that your site is compatible with these tools and with the accessibility features built in to operating systems and web browsers. Web accessibility standards provide you with guidelines on how to develop websites and web applications that work with web browser accessibility features and assistive technologies:

• W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
• Federal "Section 508" Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards
• Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act Implementation Guidelines

Following the guidelines is definitely the place to start in designing your website to be accessible, however, each of these sets of guidelines is still being tested, perfected, and revised. On top of that, web technologies and assistive technologies continue to change every day. Even if you have followed all the guidelines, it still comes down to human judgment and thorough testing to make sure you have actually achieved accessibility. MSF&W's accessibility services team can help you with this process.